


Counterweight

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 21:11:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sharing with Sherlock Holmes is rarely a choice – the details of one's career and personal life might as well be an open book. But there are parts of himself Greg has to uncover on his own before he can offer them up to anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterweight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Sherlock Reversebang](http://sherlockrebang.livejournal.com); a link to the art that inspired it can be found [here](http://sherlockrebang.livejournal.com/7933.html). Thanks so much to Albalark for beta-reading!

Greg silenced the car's buzzing radio, balanced the takeaway tray of coffee and pastry on one hand, and slid out into the street, where his foot came down at once onto a discarded paper cup. The ensuing splatter of awful flavored latte spotted his shoes – newly shined – his trouser leg – pressed this morning – and the inside of the car door – not his problem. That was one of the perks of being able to commandeer a response car for the morning; aside from being able to park it wherever the hell he wanted, he had plausible deniability when it came to who'd first spoiled the detailing. 

Still, as the warm, cloying scent of vanilla followed him to the neat little front step of 29 Montague Street, he couldn't help but wonder if it was a sort of cosmic warning. He had no business here. The report he'd read this morning recounted the proper procedure, no more, no less; a witness in one of his cases (closed, finally) had been attacked, and the appropriate statements had been taken, the usual precautions put into place. There was nothing left for him to do. He couldn't have articulated precisely why he'd come.

It certainly wasn't because of all the fun he'd had _last_ time he'd visited Sherlock Holmes. He was rude, arrogant, and strange, not to mention beautiful in a way that would have been unsettling to any married man with a few decidedly male skeletons in his closet.

But he was more than a witness, and Greg couldn't shake the feeling that he deserved more than the usual procedure. Without him, the case would have disintegrated before it had a chance to take form in the first place; without him, Greg would look a lot less rosy to his superiors than he did at present. Five absolute miracles in as many months was an unprecedented streak, and Greg knew enough to know it meant he'd found the proverbial golden egg-layer – and even if the goose was a spectacular git he was worth taking a couple hours out of one's morning for a check-up. And then, Greg wanted to get a head start on chasing down the thugs who'd done this to him, about whom Holmes had noticed suspiciously little. Another couple of gangsters off the street, another feather in his cap. That was all.

Greg hung on the bell – and again, when he'd been waiting thirty seconds. The house's other residents had apparently found other places to be, no shock at nine-thirty on a Wednesday morning. It was possible Holmes was out, too, of course, but somehow Greg doubted it. He'd once found him sitting in exactly the same spot with exactly the same half-eaten plate of toast in front of him forty-eight hours after his previous visit; an early-morning outing after being roughed up the night before seemed unlikely. 

Sure enough, after another minute and a half of persistence, the door swung open and there was Holmes, glaring out at him from somewhat less than his usual height thanks to the doubled-over stoop that, were Greg to guess, meant someone had got him a few good ones right in the stomach. The side of his face was a sad mess, split lips and a red, raw scrape along his jaw that terminated in a dark bruise under his eye. The knuckles of the hand clutching at the front of his dressing gown were, Greg noticed (quite pleased with his own astute observations), blue and battered-looking. Well. Good for him.

" _What? ___" Holmes snapped.

Greg hefted the tray and gave him a tight but chipper smile. "I brought you breakfast."

Holmes' brow made a sharp crease. " _Why?_ " he demanded, in the same bereft tone one might use to ask why someone had just killed one's kindly old dog. "I was _sleeping_ –"

"I just wanted to see if you had everything you needed," Greg cut in. Let Holmes get off on a rant and he'd leave you in the dust. It was with a slight twinge of guilt, though, that he admitted to himself that it was perhaps a little early to come calling on invalids. Just because he'd never heard Holmes so much as mention sleep didn't mean he didn't need it on occasion. "Make sure they treated you all right last night." Not everyone was as grateful as he was for Holmes' services – for his interference.

Sherlock's face pinched up in suspicion. "I'm not hungry."

"I am. Come on, let me up. I won't be long. I want to ask you some questions, that's all."

"You said you wanted to see if I was all right."

" _Are you all right_ is a –"

Holmes groaned, a long, exasperated noise that lacked a little of its usual exaggerated quality – his diaphragm was not, apparently, in any shape to facilitate his usual melodramatic antics – and turned on his heel. "Get in." He started shuffling up the narrow stairway without waiting for an answer, leaning very heavily with each step on the banister. He paused when Greg pulled the door shut after him, twisting around with an incredulous sneer still tinged with that shadow of mistrust. "What the hell kind of coffee – oh." His gaze fell to Greg's soiled trouser cuff. "Yes, lovely. Track that in here. Ass," he muttered, hauling himself up another step.

"I told you it was a stupid idea." Greg followed patiently, resisting the urge to offer his arm. "Bragging about this all over your webpage –"

"Website."

"That's what I said. It's a gang, of course they're going to come back on you for shutting down one of their drug lines." When they finally reached the second landing, Greg stepped neatly around Holmes and pushed open the door to his flat, bracing for the usual burnt chemical smell. "And then to splash the story of how much bloody _smarter_ you are all over the web – you really can't stop asking for it, can you? Not from anyone." 

Sherlock tottered in and collapsed onto the leather sofa he'd wedged into a full half of his tiny sitting room. The air was almost fresh – the single window had been thrown open, its heavy blackout curtain shoved to one side by a haphazard stack of books. Greg took a seat on the sturdy coffee table, his usual landing spot for interviews in Montague Street. He couldn’t really imagine Holmes ever setting up to entertain. He left Sherlock's coffee on the table, took his own in hand, and bit into a croissant. After a few silent moments Sherlock's hand shot into the white paper bag like an animal darting into a trap and came out with a scone. He spun it slowly in his long, stiff fingers, accomplishing nothing but a thorough study and a shower of crumbs on his chest.

Greg often found himself staring while he sat here. He'd been embarrassed at first, and had tried making himself focus on his notebook for a while (he generally was taking notes at lightning speed in any case), but eventually he'd realized that Sherlock didn't even notice. Or, if he did, he gave no indication whatsoever that it bothered him. And so he watched him openly now, surveying the scrapes and bruises, the strange, energetic figure, the petulant mouth, the rejected scone deposited on the carpet. 

He'd tried, anyway.

"Where'd you go to get patched up?" he asked, washing his breakfast down with a mouthful of coffee that suffered from the lingering vanilla stench. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. '"They're scratches – I did it myself. Tell me why you're here and stop stinking up my flat."

"I told you." That actually smarted a little. He'd only come to help, and it wasn't as though _he_ was thrilled about being covered in someone else's coffee. "I just thought I'd stop in and –"

"See if I was all right. No, you'd have read the statement they took. You already knew that. _Why_ are you here?" That wary look in his narrowed eyes had given way to impatience, and there was a certain contempt in the way he dragged himself awkwardly onto his side. "Tell me."

Greg stared, sucking at the inside of his lip. It wasn't worth holding back around Sherlock. He knew that. "Well," he admitted, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth in a slow, thoughtful arc. "You can't expect me to believe what you told them about the guys who jumped you. I mean, when's the last time _you_ couldn't remember anything about someone's face?"

Sherlock's sigh was reproachful. "The real reason, please. Whether you believe me or not, I really am tired. Do I ever waste _your_ time?"

"But …" Greg gave a hesitant, helpless shrug, feeling his face go embarrassingly blank and stuffing the last of his croissant in his mouth to interrupt the silence. As usual, he was missing something. Sherlock rarely let that state of affairs continue for too long, at least. "That is the reason. I want to get a head start on these bastards. There's no way you didn't see anything. You're holding out."

The leather upholstery creaked as Sherlock shoved himself into a sitting position. His knees jutted up too high, his long legs cramped against the edge of the coffee table. "But surely," he said, with that intense, flat expression that Greg knew could turn to a laugh as easily as to a sneer. "You must know they're being handled by someone else already."

Greg blinked. "Who?" That wasn't exactly a welcome surprise. Not that he objected to someone else taking them on, but he hadn't even known anyone had identified proper suspects. No one had told him a thing. "How can they? You didn't even give them a description."

"You really don't know." His mouth pulled into half a smile; the swollen, bloodied half was distorted along the lines of his bruises, but it was easy to see the usual gleeful mockery there all the same. Well, almost the usual – Greg thought he could detect a little extra affection this time around, although that might only have been the additional color in his face. It was hard to say. "You have no idea –"

" _No._ "

"Well." Sherlock huffed out a laugh and clutched at the arm of the sofa, beginning to pull himself to his feet. "I am insulted, Inspector," he grunted, "on your behalf. You're being sadly underestimated."

"Thanks – what? By who?"

"Stay here any longer and I'll wager you'll find out sooner than you want. Will you – my laptop's in the bedroom –"

"I'll get it, sit down." Greg rose to his feet, but before he could navigate the narrow passage between the table and the couch, Sherlock waved him over.

"Just help me – I'm going back to bed, anyway. I'm so glad you woke me; I haven't had the privilege of watching you spill your breakfast down the front of your shirt for at least two weeks –"

"All right, Christ. Come on." Greg hooked his arm around Sherlock's waist and ducked under his elbow so he could support himself across his shoulders. The way Sherlock's weight pushed down on the back of his neck and the tight, cramping curve of his abdomen and ribcage painted a picture worse than the one Greg had imagined, but he said nothing as they hobbled together across the small room to the bedroom door. 

Straightening his jacket after depositing Sherlock on his bed, Greg took the opportunity to – discreetly – brush some of the pastry flakes off of his shirtfront. "So, who the hell were you talking –"

"When he calls you," Sherlock interrupted, the lofty carelessness in his voice hampered slightly by his quickened breathing, "be sure to tell him from me he's looking a bit jowly. I saw him in Oxford Street two days ago – be _sure_ to tell him that."

"And you don't feel like telling me what you mean, I don't suppose." Greg's thumb found the warm ridge of his wedding ring as he raised his eyes from the place where Sherlock's neck and shoulder met, fascinatingly white against the glossy blue of his gown and the dull purple of his bruised jaw. "Why start now, right?"

"Oh, you'll know," Sherlock said, dismissing him with a wave. It was the second thing he'd ever said to Greg that could even arguably pass for a compliment.

And, as it happened, he was right. When Mycroft Holmes called him later that afternoon, Greg was left with absolutely no doubt in his mind that the two of them were blood relatives. Bloody pompous, overbearing relatives.

\- - -

The calls hadn't stopped since. Some six years later, he was still taking them – sometimes very much to his regret. It might have seemed churlish to complain about a free room at a cosy little inn in a beautiful corner of Devon on a charming spring weekend, but complain he would. Lying in the path of a creeping bar of sunlight that would soon drive him out of bed to a much-needed breakfast, he resolved to tell Mycroft Holmes exactly what he could do with his next _request_. Enough was enough. When a man had to ask himself upon waking whether he'd dreamed the past twenty-four hours – and when he couldn't rightly answer – well, that was a breaking point.

It wasn't the first breaking point, of course. They came around two or three times a year. He'd let Sherlock out of lock-up at least ten times since he'd sworn he'd never do it again. 

But he enjoyed _imagining_ telling the elder Holmes to sod off. 

There was only so long one could lounge around indulging in fantasies, though, and a sluggish twist toward the clock revealed he'd already slept two hours later than he'd meant to do. He hadn't set an alarm – he was still technically on holiday, and even if he hadn't been, after last night he deserved a damned lie-in. But it was almost eleven, and his conscience was nagging at him just as powerfully as was his stomach. He sat up, swung his legs out of bed, pulled a hand over his face – and nearly leapt out of his skin when there was a knock at the door. Still a bit on edge, then.

"Just a minute."

There was no one here but Sherlock who'd care to see him at all (well, aside from John, who seemed savvy enough to leave a man alone the morning after he'd faced down a massive demon dog), but Greg hadn't expected a parting interview. He'd done his bit, tagged along with his weapon and handled the questions of the local authorities before the powers that be from Baskerville had stepped in and given Greg a taste of his own medicine by assuring him that _they'd take it from here, thanks so very much_. He'd assumed his business with Sherlock was concluded.

Now dread joined hunger in chewing at his gut, and as he pulled on his belt and trousers he sent up a little prayer that whatever Sherlock wanted, it wasn't another jaunt off into the woods. He tugged his vest straight, avoided glancing at himself in the mirror over the dresser, and went to unlatch the door.

Sherlock's hands were stuffed into the pocket of his unseasonable coat. "Inspector. So sorry to wake you." He shouldered his way into the room and Greg stepped aside to let him, resigned to the intrusion. It wasn't quite fair, the way Sherlock looked perfectly fresh. They'd both been drugged, hadn't they? "How are you feeling? Quite normal?"

"Hung-over." And exposed, the way he always felt when standing in front of Sherlock with nothing between them – all the worse when he wasn't even properly dressed. He shut the door and went to fetch his shirt where it hung on the room's single overstuffed armchair, but aborted that project as soon as he caught a whiff of it. That standoff in Dewar's Hollow had been pretty nervous work.

Sherlock seemed unperturbed, as ever, by any irregularity so minor as a half-dressed conversation partner. "Why?" He was pulling the drapes away from the wall and inspecting the undersides, and Greg was quite certain he didn't care to know the reason. "We got back well after they'd stopped serving. You can't have had anything to drink, not unless you brought your own – in which case John will be rather sore with you for holding out, I'm afraid."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with all that – that, whatever, that _nightmare_ gas –"

"Oh, no. Neither John nor I have suffered any lingering side effects whatsoever. You ought to be quite back to normal." He whirled around, settling back on his heels and peering into Greg's face. "Let me guess – slight headache, fatigue, sore muscles, dry mouth, generally a bit _delicate_?"

The moments between realizing Sherlock was spot-on and admitting it to him were always a little awkward. Greg crossed his arms over his chest and wet his lips. "Yeah."

Sherlock's smile was tight and smug. "How perfectly textbook. Placebo, Inspector. Have a shower, you'll feel better – funny how just _saying_ something makes it so, isn't it?"

"Thanks for the advice."

"Yes – yes. Thank you," Sherlock replied, his words running quickly together as though he'd just remembered what he'd meant to say. "You've been very helpful. I was glad to – we were all glad to have you there, last night. I'm sure it must have been disturbing, but it's always good to have, ah – another gun, as it were."

Greg pursed his lips to stop the smile that was threatening to creep up one side of his mouth. "I didn't hit the damn thing once."

"Well." Sherlock shrugged gently; his lips twitched into a shy smile and his eyes flickered up to Greg's, knowing and almost friendly. "You've seen John's handiwork –"

"Have I?" It hadn't been nearly long enough to stop feigning ignorance about that particular incident. The scoff he received in return hadn't got quite old enough yet that he was willing to admit he knew anything about it at all.

"Right. Well – thank you. Anyway."

This was an unexpected gesture. Greg nodded, reaching up to rub at the rough corner of his jaw. "Sure. It'll be a story to tell, won't it." His imagined rant to Mycroft was slipping away from him like the fragmentary memories of a dream. But nothing arrived to fill the vacuum it left behind – the silence spun out in front of him for three seconds, four, five, and Sherlock's shifting feet and wandering gaze began to seem awkward and strange even for _him_ –

"I noticed that before," Sherlock blurted out at last, jabbing his finger toward Greg's left hand, too close, nearly grazing him. "You're – what, separating, are you?"

Clearing a sudden hot blockage in his throat, Greg lifted his hand and glanced down at the pale shadow left behind by the ring he'd worn for twenty years. "That's right. Look, it wasn't just what you –"

"I'm glad you're through being an idiot, then, you've –" Sherlock spoke over him, tumbling to an uneasy halt over the jumble of their voices. The silence fell again, strained and brittle.

"Great, thanks," Greg spat, when no apology was forthcoming. This was nothing he wanted to talk about with anyone, least of all someone who was going to shove his mistakes in his face. As though he hadn't enough of _that_ at the house he was in the process of abandoning. The warmth that had started in his chest at Sherlock's near-praised flared and evaporated. "Have a nice trip home."

"Well you _were_." There was a pinch to Sherlock's mouth and a barely perceptible tinge of pink in his face that Greg had come to recognize as embarrassment, if not quite regret. "I'm sorry if you're – if you're upset, I suppose, but you could do with one less person jerking you around, I think. Don't you? Between my brother and the idiots you work for –"

"And _you_."

The pink drained away to an angry bone-white. "I never have." There was a stammer to his voice that went just past the usual indignation. "I don't _use_ you. I don't know why I thought you might have noticed everyone else did, give how little else you –"

"All right." Loud, high, and sharp, the words sank Sherlock's oncoming insult, one of the only things Greg had learned to do with some consistency over the course of their career together. "It's all right. Okay?" He was a little touched, really, somewhere under the usual wounded anger; he wasn't quite convinced of Sherlock's assessment, but the fact he even believed it was worth considering. He _meant_ to use him well. And that – from Sherlock, who so often cared not at all how people came out on the other end of his driving, mangling analytical machine – meant something. The fact that he didn't know how to say it without sounding like a complete prat wasn't news to him and shouldn't have been able to work its way under his skin. "You're right. It's better it's over. I don't much feel like talking about it, that's all."

Sherlock's eyes were still flashing, but his bloodless lips began to come out of their tight, flat line, allowing a little red to rise up again; he nodded, though Greg could tell he wasn't satisfied. That was all right. Getting Sherlock to suppress his disagreement was a triumph in and of itself.

It was probably too much to hope for, but Greg stuck his hand out all the same. "I'll see you back in London."

As expected, the proffered handshake earned only a roll of Sherlock's eyes and a quiet snort – but just before Greg could drop his hand to his side again Sherlock seized it. His grip was too tight, at once rigid and fumbling, but Greg took it for the attempt he knew it to be to meet him in the middle, a rare enough occasion that he knew he'd managed, for once, actually to make things right. He felt Sherlock's pulse pound once against the back of his hand where the other man's thumb was pressed against the bone –

And then Sherlock snatched his arm back as though he'd been burnt, gave a violent nod, and fled without so much as a backward glance. Greg watched him, bewildered, and wondered once the room was empty whether he'd only imagined the color returning to Sherlock's face.

\- - -

Embarrassment was a funny thing. Greg couldn't remember ever seeing Sherlock red-faced at a crime scene; if he tripped up at all, he shook the mistake off (often with a physical jerk of his head) and moved on, and didn't scruple to throw the word _idiot_ at someone else two minutes later. But put him in front of a group and say _thank you_ and he went glassy-eyed, staring off at the wall or at his shoes with a wooden grimace. Greg had never seen him quite so uncomfortable as he'd been this morning during the Ricoletti press conference. When he'd slipped that ridiculous hat on for the cameras, Greg had half expected his face to split down the middle, so brittle was his obvious desire to be anywhere else.

Sherlock had run out of there almost as quickly as he'd bolted from the room in the inn, slowed only by John's shorter legs and somewhat more polite attitude toward the press. Greg had expected he'd run to ground for a while, so the text message came as a surprise: his phone chirped at half past eight that night, the very moment he'd decided he could settle in, unwind, and waste the rest of the evening with the television.

>   
> 
> 
> _I'm coming over. SH_  
> 

That was perplexing, in part because Greg had been very careful not to mention to anyone that he'd spent the past week moving house. Not that Sherlock was incapable of sniffing it out for himself, of course, but digging up the address for a house call seemed a little – well, personal. Regardless, the carpet of boxes, half unpacked, that littered both rooms of Greg's new residence (and was about to expand into the tiny bathroom) made this a place poorly suited to any kind of meeting.

Greg cast an unhappy glance at the sofa. _My office_ , he wrote back, before slipping on his jacket. If they were going to be talking business anyway, he might as well be at work.

> Don't you sleep there? SH

_Very funny._ In the car, he called ahead to make sure security knew _not_ to let Sherlock in without an escort – he had a way of worming into places he didn't belong – and tried to be grateful for the next sure thing that was about to fall into his lap, even if all he wanted to do was rest, even if seeing Sherlock alone was something he hadn't done since that morning in Dartmoor. He'd mulled for far too long over that exchange, lumbering around the details of what he should perhaps have accepted as nothing more than a particularly odd manifestation of Sherlock's awkwardness and coming up with some truly outlandish alternative explanations.

But that was only to be expected – wishful thinking was a powerful force in a man suddenly alone, left to his own devices in a flat that spoke with every wall of what he'd left behind him. Greg was no Sherlock Holmes; he wasn't constrained by the data. His imagination was free to roam beyond what was true or probable, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, spurred to action by a hard and unfamiliar mattress and a very lonely darkness, it did. A blue robe and white skin and bruising he could wipe away with an affectionate swipe of his thumb like so much wet paint – in his half-waking dreams, Sherlock came to Greg mottled with blue and scored with red, but his wounds healed at a touch and the soft, dark shadows left by blows to his face and chest and abdomen faded under Greg's mouth like night into morning.

He didn't know what it meant, but he knew it wasn't real. He left it in the dark of his bedroom with the piece of himself that stayed there, the way he had for years, and went to face his consulting detective as a Detective Inspector, because that's what they were to each other. Those were the facts.

By the time he'd arrived, parked, and made his way through the aggressively misting night to the lobby, Sherlock was there, fidgeting irritably. "Nice of you to wait," Greg said with a crooked smile, flashing his identification and moving to the desk to sign his guest in properly for once.

"They wouldn't let me up." He rocked up onto the balls of his feet; his fingers fluttered and slipped into the pockets of his coat.

"Yeah, well." Greg ushered him to the staircase. "Now that your face is all over the papers, it's going to be a little harder to pass yourself off as me, isn't it?" Grinning, he clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll have to start putting on a few pounds." That earned him a bored little sigh, as he'd known it would. In moments like these, surrounded by their comfortable status quo, Greg was best able to put all thought of something _more_ out of his mind. This was enough. 

Once in his office, he sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed over his chest, and glanced down into the mug that lived beside his keyboard to ensure that nothing disgusting was about to spill out if he knocked into it. "So – what have you got for me?"

Sherlock pushed the door shut behind him with uncharacteristic gentleness. Most of the floor was empty, but a few heads turned from their desks to look for a moment into the office windows. Sherlock was worth a few seconds of curious staring, but soon everyone seemed to have settled back into their own business.

"It's not a case." Sherlock planted his hands on the back of one of Greg's guest chairs. "I don't need your help with anything – well, not for a few days, probably," he amended, but waved off that particular avenue of discussion with an upward twitch of his chin. 

"Yeah? So –"

"Nor do I need," he continued, pressing on over him with a little of his usual pique, if not quite the fierce contempt Greg normally associated with his complaints, "your – your publicity, your credit. I don't want to have to stand in front of a bunch of gawking reporters every time I lend you a hand."

A torrent of cheeky texts, never far from Greg's thoughts when he sat down in front of those same gawking reporters, leapt immediately to mind. That was rich. "Oh, you've decided you don't like making a scene, have you? I'll let everyone know."

"I shouldn't _be_ the scene. What were you trying to do with that stupid hat? The one picture was bad enough, and now there must be eighty, and it doesn't have anything to do with –"

"Jesus. It was only teasing, that's all." Not a concept he or John or anyone else had managed to cram through Sherlock's skull as of yet, apparently. He ought to have thought of that. But Sherlock had coped with it well enough in the moment, after all. Greg could hardly be expected to predict when he was going to take offense after the fact. "That's what people do. They could haul you up there and give you a medal and tell you how brilliant you are, but – trust me, that's loads worse."

A crease sank between Sherlock's brows, exasperated and incredulous. "I don't want," he said, slowly and heavily, as though Greg had quite forgotten how to speak English, "your _presents_. Are you listening to me?"

One of them wasn't listening, that much was clear. Greg was making his most valiant effort not to feel a bit stung, because that wasn't fair – but having one's thanks thrown back in one's face was never a pleasant experience. He dropped his chin to his chest, staring at the streaks the harsh office light left in his scuffed and inexpertly shined shoes. "Get the blinds, will you?" he muttered, shifting his weight to his heels and going around to the other side of his desk, dropping into his chair and bending to open one of the lower drawers. He didn't mind people knowing he had a bottle of whiskey stashed away, but breaking it out at nine o'clock at night with a civilian was the sort of thing he felt he should at least attempt to hide.

Sherlock, thankfully, obliged, and the walls of Greg's office became one by one opaque, off-white plastic; he came to shut the blinds that served the window behind the desk overlooking the street, but Greg shook his head, pouring into one of the smudged glasses. "Don't worry about those. Do you want one?"

"No. Thank you." Standing by his chair, Sherlock made a dark, awkward column, rigid but precarious, leaning in one direction and then the other, apparently uncertain of which way to topple.

"You can have a seat, you know."

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself." Greg raised his glass out of the bar of shadow Sherlock had thrown across the desk; all the scratches it had sustained from rattling around in a drawer for years jumped into bright relief. "Look, it's not really for you, all right? The gift, the thank-yous. It's for them. For us," he corrected, bringing the drink to his lips and letting himself lean back into the chair's limited extension. "People are grateful, so they want to show you they're grateful."

Sherlock sniffed. "Oh, yes. Like Donovan and Anderson hanging around in the back – I know exactly how grateful they are. Don't –"

"They are," Greg insisted. "Of course they are. They don't like you much, because not everyone has my saintly patience, but they know what you do for them – for us. At the end of the day, they're glad for what you do." How could they not be? "And look at me – I'd be fucked ten times over if it weren't for you. Does it kill you to let people say it, once in a while?"

More than that, of course, he was proud of Sherlock; there was something that made his chest swell up a little every time Sherlock dug out another truth or nabbed another fleeting clue, and Greg was sure he couldn't be blamed for taking some pleasure in presenting him to the world. A press conference was no one's favorite vehicle for expressing anything, but watching the cameras flash in the direction of a man he knew to be deserving and whom he'd come to think of as his own would always be satisfying.

For one of them, in any case. "But you already give me everything I want – do you understand?" Sherlock seemed to be studying him as he spoke; his eyes couldn't or wouldn't find one point on which to focus. "I need the work, I need someone who'll let me at it without being constantly underfoot. What happens afterward is none of my concern. You don't have to thank me, certainly not like that."

"I've just told you, it isn't about you."

"Yes, of course." Sherlock's words drawled along under the weight of tedium, but there was a sliver of white visible between his lips, an absent sort of smile. He drew his fingers along the plane of Greg's desk, skin slipping over the worn-down patches of laminate. "Give the masses what they want, is that it? I've never cared what they think. I don't need them. You, though – there was a time I was _very_ keen on impressing you. No doubt you remember."

He bloody well did. "You don't forget a man showing up at your house with an ear in a box."

"I needed you and I knew it. You see?"

"And nothing's changed in, what – six and a half years? Come on." He drained his glass and set it down beside his neglected mug. "You could be bigger. You _are_ bigger now –"

"No." Sherlock dropped forward to grab the arms of Greg's chair, rattling it in its plastic base with his sudden weight; Greg started, sucking in a breath and staring at a face that was only inches from his own, pale and fine and cocked slightly to one side, shrouded in a sardonic calm. "No. Well – some things have." Sherlock's nostrils flared. "You've moved house – you smell of dust. I'd say you were just mucking about in the evidence room, but there's new paint, too, the cheap stuff – chalky. And then the whiskey –"

Greg's stomach felt as though it was going to make him regret that whiskey very soon. "I wish you wouldn't do that."

"I know, but it's far too late to stop now. I'm surprised it took you so long to go – you had the ring off in March." His hand closed over Greg's wrist, fingers moving with scientific precision into one position over the soft spaces between tendons, then another, then another, a strange, almost ritual progression that lacked any of Sherlock's usual restlessness.

Nothing he'd ever done had made Greg feel more like he was foundering, just barely keeping his head above the water. "It takes a lot out of you," he said, a weak, rather hoarse excuse.

It hardly mattered; Sherlock seemed to be paying him very little attention. "Does it." His chin shifted forward; his lips moved against Greg's, careful but firm, a constant, testing pressure. Greg shut his eyes so he could open them again, reassure himself that this was real, no solitary night-time delusion. The skin he could see was flawless, uniform, a little flushed, but healthy – nothing there for him to mend. The heat, the proximity, and the physical tenderness of the gesture seemed to slide effortlessly inside of him to touch an empty space he hadn't yet explored, but he felt at the same time curiously small – powerless. The realization that he wanted this, and badly, was immediate, but in his clumsiness he couldn't bring himself to grab on.

The tilt of Sherlock's head that put the cool of the office air between them once more was subtle but intentional; his task, it seemed, was finished. "And soup from a tin," he murmured, releasing Greg's wrist and straightening to his full height, regarding the man sitting before him with mask-like composure that was nonetheless soft, as though it might choose another form at any moment. "You're not doing very well."

Greg's breath had seized up in his throat, but there were no words he could have formed with it even if it had been at his disposal. The accuracy of the deduction held no surprise for him, couldn't possibly after all this time. But he had no idea what to make of the new mess of desire and confusion that had just reduced everything in his mind to unfathomable symbols, like some alien language scrawled carelessly over his own native ideas. What was he doing? Did this mean _anything_?

Sherlock gave up not a clue. "I should go," was all he said, and when he turned his back and made his exit, Greg's first coherent thought was that it was pathetic, wasn't it, that he should want so badly to ask Sherlock Holmes to explain to him what the hell was going on in his own brain.

\- - -

There were few places less like Montague Street than the busy, sooty traffic artery running tangent to this seedy strip of a town not far from Ashford. Stalled on the shoulder, uneasy in the back of a long, dark car, Greg watched the traffic appear out of the night and slide past; the headlights bled into the black tint of the car's windows and flashed white before disappearing into a low and pervasive roar of indistinguishable engines. His neck was cramping, but looking in the other direction was far worse. That way there lay only a darkened stretch of shabby houses, every detail of which he'd committed to memory over half an hour of waiting and staring, fooling himself into thinking that the reflections of turning headlights signified a car pulling into one of their alley-like drives, or that every moving shadow was a man.

_When the light goes on in the front window of the third house, go inside. Your key will fit. Don't knock. Just go in._

Mycroft's instructions had been as obscure as ever. He might have asked – why the wait? why the signal? – if he hadn't been a writhing mess of nothing _but_ questions. He remembered his own exclamations more clearly than any of Mycroft's exposition – at least, he thought they had been exclamations. Perhaps he'd said nothing all; perhaps that was why Mycroft had kept speaking as though he was deaf to everything but his own orders.

_What do you want now?_

_What? How?_

_Why didn't you tell me?_

_Can I see him? What does he need?_

Greg wasn't much wiser now than he'd been when he'd picked up the phone. He was entirely scattered, light-headed; it didn't help that his attention kept careening back and forth between the gnawing tension in his gut and the jagged memories resurfacing from the day Sherlock had jumped, the dreadful buzzing whispers that had whipped across the office floor like foam on choppy water, the way he'd had to wade neck-deep into the wary, silent stares before anyone would tell him what was going on. He'd asked his share of questions then, too, and had received no answers.

_Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted? Does that make you happy?_

The little he'd learned since wasn't much to cling to. Sherlock was alive, Sherlock had saved him from being shot, Sherlock was spending tonight in the third house from the corner. 

"There."

The faceless, croaking voice from the front of the car made him whip his head around – yes, there was the light. He fumbled with the door handle and slid out at once, reaching back to take the box Mycroft had said he'd need to deliver – food and toiletries, he'd already checked – and elbowing the door shut behind him. His hand closed around the key in his jacket pocket, steady but too warm. He felt as though he were watching himself from some other position, as though his fear had split him in two – but he wasn't precisely afraid. He was at the door before he knew it; his key fit; he didn't knock. He went inside.

It was a yellowing, old-fashioned living room that greeted him, musty and worn and all florals and chunky lace, the sort of thing his grandmother might have favored. The fringe hanging off the shade of the one lit lamp was swinging gently back and forth. Someone had just left the room.

Greg set the box on the hard sofa and stood, lost, listening.

"You can go now," Sherlock called from down the narrow, dimly illuminated hall, a tired rasp to his voice but otherwise just as Greg remembered – deep, sour, and unimpressed. Footsteps advanced in a soft, uneven rhythm; a long shadow spilled into the room. "I'd ask you to stay for tea, but considering what dreadful company you were last time, I think we can both –"

Sherlock halted on the threshold; his mouth snapped shut. His hair was greasy and tousled and his clothes were perhaps a little more unkempt than usual, but as far as Greg could tell the only effect the past five months had had on him had been to dishevel him slightly.

He'd expected to be angry. But all he felt was gratitude – gratitude, and the jarringly lucid relief of waking up from a terrible dream.

"Oh, God," Sherlock sighed, fixing the door with a burning glare Greg knew very, very well. "He sent you, did he? I should have known."

"Sherlock –"

"You'll want to be leaving. He's made his point – believe me, there's nothing else you can do. Go run your mouth all over town, Mycroft will be delighted –"

" _Sherlock._ " Greg caught him by the arm just as he was turning to vanish down the hall again, but the thrill of the warm solidity of his body in his hand lasted only a moment before a tight, strangled sound worked its way out of Sherlock's throat and he made a violent twist toward the wall. Greg let go of him at once. Nausea wrung his insides at the look on Sherlock's face, strained and ashen. "God, I'm sorry –"

Sherlock shut his eyes and shook his head. "I'm fine." His ribs rose and fell too quickly, hitching with every breath. He leaned his shoulders back against the wall. "I'm fine. He sent you with soap, I expect? Then bring it," he added, after cracking one eye to take in Greg's anxious nod. "You're here, you might as well help. Go."

A hurried rifling through the box produced a tube of shampoo, an unmarked bar of strong-smelling soap, and a bottle of paracetamol, all of which he rushed back to the washroom at the end of the hallway. It was a small space; Sherlock stripping off his jacket in halting, rigid movements took up most of the room between the sink and the wall. Greg squeezed in behind him to help, gripping the yoke of his jacket and easing it back off his arms. The subtle bulk of a bandage distorted his button-up shirt. The vigorous hum of the fan in the ceiling was the only sound as Sherlock worked at unfastening his shirt and Greg peeled the soap out of its box, stealing disbelieving glances at the mirror.

"Mycroft told you," Sherlock grunted, finally, pushing one shoulder free of the fabric, "about the gunmen? Moriarty's?"

"He said everyone had to think you were dead, or I'd have been shot. And John, and Mrs. Hudson." He hadn't bothered to explain why, and while there were threads of an idea twisting slowly together in Greg's mind – Moriarty's phony tell-all in the Sun had started to give things a certain shape – there was no reason to speculate now. "How did you even –"

"I'm not going to tell you how. I'm sorry." He nodded his thanks as Greg helped remove his shirt and toss it into the hall. The bandage lay slightly askew and seemed sweat-stained in places, but it wasn't bloody. "There are people who helped me, people still in London who'd be implicated if word got out. And as good as your intentions are, Inspector," he continued, resting his palms flat on the white ceramic at either side of the sink and meeting Greg's eyes in the mirror, "I'm really not prepared to risk it. I've been hard at work, as you can see." He made a delicate attempt to pull away some of the tape, left off, and pursed his lips. "It'll go easier if you just do it. Please."

Sherlock's skin twitched away from Greg's fingers as he worked them beneath the edges of the bandage. "What, the whole thing?"

"Just rip it off, there's no sense - _ah_!"

"Sorry." Greg laid it aside as quickly as possible, not overly eager to see whatever it had collected. Blood didn't always bother him, but tonight he doubted his constitution could take any more than it absolutely had to. "It looks …" Well, he wasn't a doctor, was he? Not too swollen, though. That was good. He watched Sherlock use the bar of soap to lather up a hand towel under the tap, and wondered if that was quite sanitary. The soap foamed up with encouraging enthusiasm, at least, and the harsh, chemical smell it produced was reassuring. It was mesmerizing, in fact; he found himself lost, for how long he couldn't tell, in the cyclical expansion of the suds, rising into an amorphous tower and rinsing away again to reveal the long, reddened hands they had obscured, then building once more on the same slick foundations. It was surreal to stand beside Sherlock Holmes, a man who should be dead but now was not, and watch him engage in something quite as mundane as washing his hands.

He felt, indeed, as though he were spying. He swallowed. The back of his tongue tasted bitter. "Does John know?"

Sherlock wrung the towel, knuckles standing out white against his flushed fingers. "No." He didn't look up; his lank hair hid all of his downward-tilted face in the mirror, and Greg did what he supposed was the decent thing and looked away. "I was afraid Mycroft would send him. My brother's trying to force my hand, you see, but – well, you don't, do you. You don't need the details. He thinks it's time to move into the final stage of our plan, and I disagree, but now there won't be much choice. John can't keep a secret to save his life, and neither can you. Don't look so wounded, none of you can help it." He raised his arm, exposing the rough gashes that ran along his ribs, and winced. "I thought he would send John, eventually. But you're the better choice, aren't you – far more obedient. You've been taking his orders for years, and you have other obligations; you'll go back to London like he wants you to, because you have a job you can't abandon. You won't be underfoot. John would have been, if only to spite him."

 _Obedient_ rankled more than Greg could say. He wanted to protest, to say he wasn't here for Mycroft, for God's sake, but then Sherlock was offering him the soapy rag and he shoved all of that aside in favor of the business at hand. That could wait. This couldn't – this was the wounded flesh of someone who should have been in the ground. "I saw John a couple of weeks ago." He squeezed the cloth against Sherlock's side. "He's doing better, I –"

"I know how he's doing," Sherlock growled. 

They said nothing after that, not until the cloth had been cast into the bathtub, the painkillers had been opened and administered, and Sherlock had moved to the bedroom, where he finally asked in a tone that approached apologetic whether Greg would get him a glass of water. 

"If Mycroft wanted to spill your secret for you," Greg said when he returned, setting the glass on the narrow bedside table, "he could have just done it. He doesn't need me to do it for him. He'd probably do a better job of making it look like a mistake than – than my actual mistake." He sat on the edge of the mattress, facing Sherlock where he was leaning with his elbow propped up on the headboard to let the skin around his injury dry.

Sherlock smiled, his eyebrows rising just a fraction of an inch. "Quite right. But he feels guilty, you see – don't worry, it doesn't matter why. In his own way, I think he's trying to be kind."

Had he been dealing with anyone but the Holmes brothers, Greg might have let Sherlock keep his illusions, but he knew there was no love lost there – and that Sherlock appreciated honesty more than tact any day. "I didn't really get _kind_ from him, when he called." The same cold fish as ever, and nothing more. "I should have guessed he wasn't bringing me here out of the goodness of his heart, but I didn't think about it, I mean – how could I –"

"No, it's all right." Sherlock stretched his legs out, nudging his shoes off of his feet and kicking them beyond the edge of the mattress. "You wrong him, though. If you ever tell him I said so, of course, I'll have you murdered, but I think, this time, he's displaying the iota of conscience he possesses."

Greg wanted to say that if he'd known what Mycroft was playing at, he wouldn't have come. He wasn't certain it was true, though, because there were other things he couldn't bring himself to say that were just as important, probably more so, and which would have driven him to Sherlock's doorstep if he'd had to walk every step of the way form London. He wanted to say them now – there wasn't much he wanted more than that – but a familiar paralysis had taken hold of him, rendering him incapable of doing more than wringing his hands slowly in his lap and staring at some fixed point in the distance, blank, feeling his own inadequacy weighing him down more heavily with each passing second. He hated it as one can only hate something that has been a lifelong companion. He knew without a doubt it was the reason he'd lost his wife. 

Sherlock, though, was not so inhibited. "He's known how you feel about me for ages, I think – for longer than you have. _Possibly_ longer than I've known, but he doesn't need to know that, does he? That's why he grabbed onto you and wouldn't let go. You fed him the right sort of information, a nice bonus, to be sure, but he also knew exactly how he'd be able to manipulate you, if the occasion should arise. I suppose he must have wondered if one day he could use it to twist _me_ around his not-so-little finger, but he can't have banked on that. It'd have been a nice ace up his sleeve, though, if that particular investment ever matured." He made a low, thoughtful sound, a brief laugh buried in his chest. "And now he's trying to pay his debt to me in assets he collected specifically intending to cheat me with them later. On second thought, he can go jump off a cliff."

Somehow, even under those pounding, condemnatory revelations, Greg managed to raise his eyes to the ceiling, to wrangle a few miserable sounds out of his lungs. "If I had known what he was doing –" A complete sentence was too much to ask for, clearly. Well, he could work in pieces. He looked Sherlock in the eye, and felt even more frightfully grim than that abused, exhausted countenance. "I'm sorry."

Genuine surprise wasn't something he often saw on Sherlock's face; twice in one night was unquestionably a record. Sherlock held his gaze, taken aback, his mouth working uncertainly – and then he cleared his throat and glanced away, busying himself with readjusting the pillow behind his back. "Come here, will you?" he asked after a beat, unnaturally gruff. "I don't – I'm not going to move until I get this stupid thing bandaged again."

Greg nodded, stood, and went to sit beside him, positioning himself in the gap between Sherlock's wounded side and his upraised arm, careful not to touch him. When Sherlock's fingers came to rest on his jaw he was still, only curling his toes inside his shoes. He felt clumsy again, too large, as though anything he touched might crumble. There really was nothing more terrifying than hope.

"I am glad to see you." There was something formal and uncomfortable in the way Sherlock bore himself up when he said it, but his hand was light, gentle where it lay against his skin. "However you came here. And even though it can't be for very long."

"When will you come back?" _Will you bring this with you?_

Sherlock shook his head, wetting his lips and drumming his fingers on the wooden bed frame. "I can't say. You won't know – that's how it has to be. You'll have to trust me, that's all." When he leaned in to kiss him it was tentative, an awkward navigation of the space Greg had left between them, but his mouth was warm and the soft, hesitant pressure of his tongue against Greg's lip was exhilaratingly real, something he knew he would cling to when he woke, a memory he'd tell himself no dream could have produced. "I am sorry," Sherlock breathed against his temple.

"No." Greg let his hand fall on Sherlock's thigh, and when that didn't shatter him, he slid it up to his hip, where his thumb could stroke across the clean, uninterrupted skin of his unwounded side. For all the thousand times he'd have danced to hear Sherlock say that, he found that right now he couldn't bear it – that nothing held greater peril for the squeezing in his throat or the ominous burn behind his eyes than the thought of Sherlock unhappy. Wounds he could heal, if not as easily as in dreams, but that …

He felt ineffectual, trifling as he stroked the back of Sherlock's hand – until Sherlock's head found its resting place on his shoulder. The weight balanced him in a way he couldn't have explained, replaced something that had been lacking.

"You can stay until Mycroft sends the car back." Sherlock murmured. "I don't know when he will – sometime before morning."

It was at about three o'clock, with Sherlock's side fitted into the empty crook of his arm, that Greg thought he might have found what he'd been missing; it was as though something new had flown into the room under cover of darkness and alighted on his chest, the warmth and weight of another man's slightly labored breathing, something to hold, to support. And when he relinquished it shortly before dawn to go pile into the same long, dark car that had brought him here, he could still feel the promise of it in the hollow angles of his body where it would come to rest again, he hoped, soon.


End file.
